Inside Vancouver
Julia Levy
By John Burns published Nov 2, 2008
You’ve left the board of QLT Inc., the biotech firm you helped found, and are now a director of Cannasat Therapeutics, based in Toronto. What’s it like switching from an eye drug to a pot-based pain reliever?
I find the cannabinoid group of compounds extremely interesting—with extraordinary physiological activities that have nothing to do with the pot effect. I’ve seen clinical data showing extraordinary effects on schizophrenia. And the pain relief is real, though a lot of people are still disbelievers. Physicians prescribe ever-increasing amounts of morphine, for example, which is so damaging—it’s addictive, it causes horrible constipation, it can cause vomiting. Meanwhile, cannabis does not have these side effects.
“Cannabinoids” instead of “cannabis,” or “pot”—isn’t this just semantic wordplay to use with regulators?
The cannabinoid drug we’re developing for use in schizophrenia, CAT 320, is chemically distinct from cannabis. It doesn’t have psychotropic effects. There’s a whole raft of mental disorders that could be acted on by this type of molecule. It’s been difficult to do research on the CAT 310 pain reliever because of the political stigma. And it’s worse in the U.S.—you can’t even do clinical trials there.
You’ve been sitting on government boards since the ’70s. How would you characterize federal support for biotech?
Where government could help is by looking at regulations that small companies have to go through to bring a product forward. Getting things into the clinic in this country can take way longer than in the States. Here, you put in an application and it can sit there for 60 days; then they’ll
